Jobs 'fully involved in decision making' and other rumours

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is fully involved in decision-making, according to one source. Plus, Apple may have bought a 3D mapping company, The Red Hot Chili Peppers get ready to rock in lo-fi, and if you thought Apple's App Store had some raw deals, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is fully involved in decision-making, according to one source. Plus, Apple may have bought a 3D mapping company, The Red Hot Chili Peppers get ready to rock in lo-fi, and if you thought Apple's App Store had some raw deals, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Steve Jobs may not be in the office on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean he's not keeping close tabs on what goes on. According to analyst Tim Bajarin, Steve calls in regularly to chat with his executive team, but he's taken to micromanaging less, since many of the day-to-day decisions now rely on his top men. Top. Men.

A Swedish mapping company that specializes in 3D technology got itself acquired in July...but nobody seems to know by whom. Of course, rumors are focusing on Apple, who could in theory use the company's technology to beef up its mapping capabilities. An inside source tells Macworld that Apple's next-generation map software is so good, you won't even actually have to go to the places you look up. Ever.

Apparently the forthcoming Red Hot Chili Peppers's album is being "mastered specifically for iTunes." Nobody seems to know exactly what that means, but if audiophiles are to be believed, it will sound inferior to Thomas Edison's wax cylinders--the way music was meant to be heard.

Turns out The New Yorker's foray into digital publishing is going pretty well. The weekly publication has racked up 100,000 readers on the iPad, as well as 20,000 paid subscribers. And 75,000 of its print readers have downloaded the app for free, making The New Yorker Condé Nast's best-selling iPad magazine. The Times argues that this means people are still reading--I say they just love the cartoons.

In a tale from the Amazon App Store, developer Shifty Jelly talks about having one of its Android apps end up as the retail site's Free App of the Day. Shifty Jelly racked up more than 101,000 downloads and made...not a cent, thanks to the terms of Amazon's promotional deals. To be fair, the company knew the terms and decided to go forward anyway--but that doesn't make it any less of an attractive proposition for other developers, because even 100 percent of nothin' is...let's see...carry the one...